YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS GO MULTIMEDIA

September 29, 2006

More and more these days, the networks are spinning off their TV shows into a variety of multimedia endeavors that are meant to both enhance and promote the original product. The most obvious example is ABC's island mystery "Lost," which has begotten "Bad Twin," a fake novel written by one of the show's plane-crash victims that was turned into a real novel and published, as well as The Lost Experience, a kind of high-tech scavenger hunt that saw clues pop up this summer on the Internet, in TV commercials, and as part of newspaper advertisements.

At first it seems harmless enough -- a way to keep fanatics entertained and interested during the summer hiatus. But recently a disturbing trend has taken shape. These spinoffs are now treading on storylines that should be dealt with by the TV shows themselves, not some officially-sanctioned side project. Consider The Lost Experience, which recently ended with a stunning revelation -- the meaning of Hurley's magic numbers. At the end of the game, a video was released of Alvar Hanson (a key figure in "Lost" mythology) where he explains that the numbers four, eight, 15, 16, 23, and 42 are something known as the Valenzetti equation, a mathematical prophesy that reveals the exact moment the human race will cease to exist.

Well, that's a pretty big piece of the "Lost" puzzle to be passed out at the end of an Internet game. That is, if it can even be considered canon, since the creators of "Lost" weren't heavily involved in the creation of the game. All of which brings us to problem number one with this type of endeavor. ABC execs are saying that information doled out during The Lost Experience (including the fact that the Dharma Initiative was formed to help prevent the fall of man) could eventually come into play on the show itself. But I have no doubt that if the producers of "Lost" decide to go in another direction, the secrets revealed via The Lost Experience will end up as no more "official" than the worst written fanfic. And wouldn't that make participating in The Experience (or reading "Bad Twin") one big waste of time?

Yet another concern with this type of spinoff product is the drop-off in quality that can occur, again, because the people that make the show usually aren't the people producing the ancillary product. For a primo example of this, check out "Beyond Jericho," the spinoff webisodes of the new CBS drama "Jericho" that are available for viewing at the show's website. "Jericho" tells the story of a small Kansas town that is cut off from the rest of the country after a mysterious mushroom cloud appears on the horizon. It's too early to tell how much merit the story has, but it's clear early on that the acting and production values are solid.

The "Beyond Jericho" shorts are subtitled "Other Survivors," and the first three-minute episode is an amateurish tale of a mob kidnapping and what happens when kidnapper and kidnappee emerge from an underground bunker to find the city at the surface has been reduced to a post-nuclear wasteland. The actors are awful, and the production values a joke. (Actually, I suggest you check it out just for a good laugh.) Like The Lost Experience, "Beyond Jericho" also seems to give away a key piece of information that the show has yet to -- confirmation that the mushroom cloud in the distance is, in fact, a nuclear attack and whole cities have been wasted.

"Lost" is a bona fide sensation, so while it may be annoying to see all these multimedia spinoffs to the franchise popping up, it at least makes sense. (Networks will always exploit their shows to earn an extra buck.) And it's not like these things can never work. "The Office" shorts released on the Net this summer that focused on the more obscure members of the cast were an inspired idea. But they truly were side stories and didn't screw with the integrity of the real show. For a brand new show like "Jericho," extraneous projects such as "Beyond Jericho" just seem more trouble than they're worth.